


The Gloaming

by perihadion



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:53:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23401015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perihadion/pseuds/perihadion
Summary: When Cara Dune is kidnapped by Moff Gideon, Din seeks the help of an old friend.
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Peli Motto, Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 83





	The Gloaming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kat_erin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat_erin/gifts).



> Many, many thanks to Kat — I hope you like this fic!
> 
> Do not comment with Omera hate.

The communicator crackled. Din turned to look as a small hologram of someone he recognised glimmered into view — and his blood ran cold. He glanced over his shoulder at the Child, whose ears perked up as he met his eyes.

“Greetings, Din Djarin,” said the ghost-like form of Moff Gideon. Din closed his eyes. It should not have been a surprise that Gideon had survived: it was not as if he had checked the wreckage of the TIE fighter and Gideon had survived before. “I trust this missive finds you well,” Gideon continued. “Now,” — and he seemed to look right into Din’s eyes — “I won’t waste your time. You have something I want. I have something which I believe you want.”

The image flickered for a moment and the sound cut out, replaced with a high-pitched ringing. He saw an image of Cara being pushed onto her knees by Storm Troopers. She looked wild and desperate. Din clenched his jaw and Gideon reappeared.

“The how and the where is not important. Suffice it to say that I have your comrade in my custody. I would say that I wish to negotiate but the truth is that there is only one thing that I want: the Child.”

There was a beeping from the console, confirming the transmission of coordinate data. “I have transmitted the time and the place for the hand-over,” Gideon continued. “You will bring the Child, and Cara Dune will survive. If you do not bring the Child, she will be executed. I leave the decision in your hands.” He vanished and the comm-link blinked off. Din looked at the coordinate data. He had 48 hours. He looked at the Child again, who was sucking on his mythosaur necklace.

He had no choice but to act: Cara was a veteran and she would attempt an escape but Gideon was competent, motivated, and dangerous. Din knew, or at least he felt, that Cara would come for him if the situation were reversed — and there was something else, something blossoming inside him which he had tried to ignore. The thought of losing Cara was as unbearable as the thought of losing the Child: it would be like losing a part of himself.

Trading the Child was out of the question and Gideon would know that but he must have anticipated that Din would feel this way and that he would make a mistake that would facilitate the Child's capture. Din had to proceed with care. He closed his eyes. There was so little time. When he opened his eyes again the Child, who seemed to have sensed Din’s tension, was silent, looking up at him with the big black eyes which seemed to contain the universe.

“We’ll get her back,” Din said to him and, turning back to the console, set a course for Tattooine.

* * *

“Well!” said Peli, approaching the Razor Crest, “I see you’re back for some repairs — and not a moment too soon. Look at this thing, it’s falling apart!” She peered behind Din to smile at the Child, who had toddled out behind him, “Well hello again, bright eyes!” The Child cooed and raised his arms to her and she lifted him gently into her arms.

“I’m afraid I don’t have time for repairs,” Din said. Peli bounced the Child in her arms as she frowned at him as if to say ‘you should make time’. Din held out a data disc. “I was hoping that you might be able to help me trace the source of this transmission. It’s time-sensitive.”

Peli took the disc from him and examined it, “On one condition,” she said. He tilted his head. “You come back here after so I can fix your ship up.” She smiled at the Child again, “Can’t have you flying this one around in a ship that’s falling apart, no we can’t.”

Din nodded, “Thank you,” he said. He looked at the smiling Child in her arms and said, “I have another favour to ask you, if it’s not too much trouble.”

* * *

Cara had no idea how long she had been in her cell. She sat on the floor with her back to the wall, and watched Gideon, who was examining her through the glass. She tilted her head and waited for him to speak. She had been captured before, during the war, and she knew that all interrogators had their own technique.

At length he said, “I apologise for the state of your accommodation.” She rolled her eyes. “I want you to understand,” he continued, “that I bear no personal ill will towards you or the Mandalorian.”

She smiled. “I bear a considerable amount of ill will towards you,” she said, making it clear that if she were on an even footing he would already be dead.

The ghost of a smile crossed his features. “I understand that for you it is ideological. For me, this is not the case. My interest is in obtaining — and retaining — power.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Your honesty is refreshing.”

He continued as if she had said nothing: “The problem with allowing yourself to be ruled by your ideology is that it makes you predictable.” He paused for effect and then added, “And it makes you take risks. For example, right now your friend the Mandalorian is considering how to risk everything for your life.”

Cara felt as if the blood in her veins had been replaced with ice. But there was no way that Din would risk the Child for her. He had once begged her to let him die a warrior's death: he understood her: he knew the choice she had made, he knew that she would die for him. If this was how she was going to die then at least in protecting the Child the two of them had done something meaningful — maybe the most meaningful act of her life. Din would understand that. Gideon said nothing, observing her for a few minutes more, and then he left without a word.

* * *

The ship Cara was being held on was one of the smaller class of decommissioned Imperial prison ships. Not for the first time Din wondered where the Imperial remnant was getting their resources, why they still seemed so powerful, so organised. When the threat to the Child seemed to come from one Imp and the bounty guild things felt unmanageable: the more he learned about how far the tendrils reached the more he felt strangled by them. He remembered what his father — his true father — had once said to him as a boy, as he helped tend to their vegetable patch: you have to be careful when you pull out a weed not to break off the roots, because it will only come back stronger.

It seemed like the Rebellion had pulled the weed and left the roots intact.

The ship was minimally-staffed but that was no surprise. He knew from the start that it was a trap. Gideon was intelligent enough to know that Din would realise that, and that he would have no choice but to try to spring it and try to escape with the bait: he felt no need to waste resources on a perfunctory show of force.

Din sent a pulse to disrupt the ship’s security system — another of Peli’s seemingly unending tools — and docked. All he could do now was hope that he had not miscalculated, that he had correctly judged the nature of the trap and how to disarm it.

He knew from his scan that only one of the ship’s cells was occupied. There were Storm Troopers patrolling the corridors but Din flitted like a wraith through them despite the extra bulk he was carrying. His heart was pounding.

He reached the cell. It was her. Cara stood and approached the glass, shaking her head. “Why?” she mouthed and then, slamming her fist against it, “You idiot”. He said nothing, opening up the panel next to the door. This was an old ship and Din was familiar with the security system: he was able to get the door open in a matter of moments.

“Come on,” he said, thrusting a blaster into her hands. She followed him back through the bowels of the ship. They ran into no trouble and he knew that she sensed it too: there was no trouble because the Imps had no interest in keeping her.

As soon as they were on board the Razor Crest she grabbed him roughly by the shoulder, “What the fuck, Din?” He turned to her. She had tears in her eyes and he realised with a stab that she had been ready to die for the Child, die for him.

“Be careful,” he said. He shrugged off the pack he wore under his cloak, which he had arranged to look like his jetpack and opened it up. The Child peered up at him. “You did well, adi’ka,” he said. He looked at Cara again and held the pack out to her. She took it without protest, looking down at the Child in her arms. “We have to get out of here,” he said.

* * *

“Where are we going?” Cara asked as Din set a course.

“Tattooine,” he said. “If I’m right Gideon thinks the Child is there and a friend of mine is in danger.”

Cara understood: Din thought Gideon’s plan had been for him to leave the Child with a friend while he tried to release Cara so he had taken a risk and kept the Child with him. The thought of what might have happened if he had miscalculated made her feel sick and she fell to her knees.

“Hey!” she heard Din say, as he grabbed her by the shoulders to steady her.

“ _Why?_ ” she said again, gripping his shoulder so hard her fingers turned white. “Do you understand what could have happened? You should have left me.”

He pulled her to her feet and put her in the copilot’s seat. The Child had climbed out of his makeshift bed in Din’s pack and was watching them. She was crying now, humiliated by her body which shook and sobbed in his arms: yet another indignity — to have to be rescued, and now to be crying in her rescuer’s arms. She pounded her fist against his chest and pushed him away.

“I had to,” he said, quietly.

She breathed in and out, not looking at him until the tears had stopped.

“I couldn’t leave you,” Din said as she met his eyes. He pushed her hair back from her face. “You wouldn’t leave me.” Cara closed her eyes as she felt the tears welling up again. She felt Din put a hand on the back of her neck and pull her head forwards until her forehead touched the cold beskar of his helmet. She bunched her hands up in his cowl: she understood, and she felt it too, and it all seemed so hopeless.

They stayed in their embrace for a few moments. Cara’s hand found its way under Din’s cowl: she wanted to touch him, just for a moment, just this once. She rubbed her hand around his neck and her thumb traced lightly across his jaw. He turned his head a little into her touch and she felt that his cheek was wet.

Maybe if she had been a Mandalorian she could have saved some of her dignity under a helmet too.

“What is it for?” she said, almost to herself. “All this fighting, all this loss.” She pulled back from him and shook her head. “I was ready to die for you and him,” she said. “You should have let me. Now there’s someone else in danger because of me.”

Din said nothing but bowed his head to look at the Child, who had toddled up to them and placed his hand on Din’s boot. He lifted the Child into his arms and stood up. “I know how you feel,” he said, looking at the Child in his arms. “We’ve all given so much for this war and it never ends.”

“You saw how big that ship was,” Cara said. “The Empire isn’t gone. So many of my friends gave their life to defeat them and for what? The New Republic? What’s it _for_ , Din?”

Din looked up at her sharply at the use of his real name. She realised that this was the first time she had said it out loud.

“For each other,” he said, after a long silence. He looked at the Child again, who was falling asleep against his chest. “Even if we can’t win we have to try.” He stroked the Child’s head. “Whatever happens we have to try to protect the people we love.”

Cara felt her heart stop — but before she could say anything Din had left with the Child.

* * *

Cara curled into herself on her bunk. It would still be some time before they reached Tattooine. She wondered if Din had any plan for what to do when they reached his friend. She supposed he must. He seemed to have a plan for everything.

She was the one who had screwed up.

When Karga had relayed information about Gideon’s continued presence on Nevarro to her she should have been more circumspect about what to do with it. She should have known that tearing off without a plan to try to kill him would have gone the way it did. Maybe she had known that. Maybe she had expected to die. Either way the thought of sitting back and taking their time had been unbearable to her: she had thought of Gideon growing stronger every day and every day getting closer to his target.

She had held Din in her arms once as he bled out and it was once too many. The thought that he might be killed somewhere far away from her, rended from his son, all alone in the cold and dark galaxy, was too much to bear.

She was haunted by the ghost of his earlier words.

Was it possible that he felt the same way that she did? — that the thought of her dying alone in unfriendly territory was unbearable to him?

She thought back on their relationship. Her feelings had grown somewhere deep inside of her, hidden from her, but they had been with her from the moment they met: she had felt some deep understanding and kinship — it was almost supernatural. They way they thought together, moved together, felt together. But in all of this he had never hinted even once that he had felt the same way about her.

Would she even have noticed if he had?

She started at a sudden knock on the door.

“It’s me,” came Din’s voice.

She sat up on the bunk and took a deep breath. “I’m decent, don’t worry.” There was no movement for a few moments and so she added, “You can come in.”

He entered and looked around, avoiding her gaze. Eventually he pulled up a crate and sat on it, looking down at his hands. She frowned and leaned forward to peer at his helmet — the impenetrable forcefield between her and him.

“I wanted to apologise,” he said.

She straightened up. “What?”

He paused for a long time and then he said, “What I said earlier, about the people I love.” She heard him take a long, deep, shuddering breath. “It wasn’t fair to put that on you.”

“What are you saying?” she said. He looked up at her. “You mean that you —?”

He looked down at his hands again.

Cara took a deep breath. She leaned forward again and put her hand on his. Her fingers were trembling as she turned it over to trace a fingertip over the palm of his glove. She avoided meeting his eyes and just watched their hands: the movement of her fingers, the way his twitched and then curled up to stroke her palm. She felt that perhaps they were beginning to understand, the two of them.

She looked up at him, into the visor of his helmet, and put her hands to the rim of it. She tilted her head — please? — and closed her eyes. His hands came to her wrists and she felt his grip tighten, then he helped her remove his helmet. Then his lips were crashing down on hers, pulling her into him. He kissed her hard as she put her hands in his hair. She kissed back with as much fervour, feeling like her heart was bursting. She felt Din lean forward, pulling her into him, one hand on her waist and one in her hair — and then he broke the kiss, pressing one more kiss to her lips before burying his face in her neck.

They both slid to their knees on the floor as she gathered him into her arms, rocking back and forth. Her mind was racing, trying to catch up with her heart and her body.

“I’ll keep my eyes closed,” she whispered in his ear. He nodded and then, after a few moments, he pulled back. She felt his hands on her cheeks and then his kiss to her forehead and then, gently, her mouth. Then she heard the scrape of his helmet against metal, and felt him stand, and heard him say, “Thank you.” And then she was alone again in the middle of the floor.

* * *

Din was glad that the Child was still sleeping although he knew he couldn’t hope that the Child would remain asleep through whatever happened on Tattooine. They were approaching the planet now and he had taken the Razor Crest off autopilot.

He heard Cara approach and his hands tightened on the controls.

“Hi,” she said. He felt her take the copilot seat behind him and turned to look at her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She frowned at him. “Stop apologising,” she said. He looked out at the viewport again. Tattooine loomed in the distance, racing towards them. “You know how I feel.” She paused for a long time and then added quietly, “I don’t know what we do with that information, but it’s nothing to apologise for.”

He nodded. He understood.

“We’re approaching Tattooine,” he said.

She stood. “What’s the plan?”

Din looked at the computer. “I don’t see any ships, that means no dogfighting.” She placed her hand on his shoulder and he swallowed. “Gideon is no fool, he will have opted for a stealth attack. Peli knows to expect one. And when he realises the Child is not there he will expect us. So we’ll land in the hangar.”

“He’ll know I’m with you,” she said. “There’s no chance for a surprise there.”

He nodded. “I know. But I want you to stay with the Child.”

Before she could remove her hand from his shoulder he turned and grabbed her wrist. She looked furious. “Cara, look,” he said. “If I take the Child he gets captured. If I leave him here alone he gets captured. I need you to protect him.”

She pulled her hand from his grip but he knew she understood him.

“How do you always get your way?” she said, at length.

“It’s not me,” he replied. “It’s the kid.”

* * *

None of Peli's droids came to meet the Razor Crest. There was no sight or sign of any Storm Troopers or Gideon himself. Din knew that although they had a head-start on him Tattooine would have been a difficult planet for them to infiltrate.

The door to the ship closed behind him as he stepped out into the hangar. He paused and scanned Peli's shop, then he broke out into a run.

Peli was slumped over on the floor, surrounded by her droids, who were beeping in consternation. The shop was in disarray and Peli was badly injured. Din rushed to her and knelt next to her, putting his hand on her shoulder.

She turned her face to him and her eyelids fluttered. “That you, Mando?” she asked.

“Hold on,” he said, putting an arm around her waist and one under her knees to lift her. He fumbled with the comm-link as he stood and said, “Cara? Cara? I’m coming.”

Peli slumped against Din’s shoulder as he walked back towards the ship but he turned to look at her droids which were still cowering from him in the back. He nodded to them to follow him and returned to the Razor Crest with Peli in his arms.

* * *

When Peli came to her head was pounding and she was in an unfamiliar environment, but she was alive — thanks, she supposed (or no thanks) to the Mandalorian. She heard the familiar beeping of her droids and opened her eyes. Watching her, with the strange toddler in her arms, was a black-haired rebel soldier. Peli had to admit, she was breathtaking. “So you’re the one I risked my ass for,” she said.

The soldier looked pained. “Sorry,” she said. She grabbed a comm-link and said, “D— Mando, she’s awake.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Peli said. “Now that I’ve seen you I know it was worth it.” The soldier looked like she was about to say something but the baby in her lap started squirming and reached out to Peli. Peli reached her arms out in response and the soldier handed the baby over to her. “Well now,” Peli said. “I’m glad to see you’re right as rain, bright eyes.”

At that moment the door opened and the Mandalorian entered. The soldier stood to make space. He nodded to her and she left — but Peli saw the way she looked at him before she left. Now she understood why it was so important to the Mandalorian to save this one. “I’m sorry,” the Mandalorian said, taking the seat where the soldier had sat. “I didn’t think he would do this. I thought he would —”

“Don’t worry about it,” Peli said. The Mandalorian tilted his head. She smiled. “I’m not a fan of it but I’m used to it. I lived through a war too.”

The baby in her arms cooed and reached for his caregiver. The Mandalorian took him and put him on his lap.

“You won’t be able to go back to Tattooine,” the Mandalorian said. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, that old dust bowl?” Peli said. “I’m glad to see the back of it. Besides a mechanic like me can make a living anywhere.”

The Mandalorian nodded and stood, cradling the infant in his arms. Peli was pleased to see that he had grown more natural with the baby. “I’ll let you rest,” he said. He turned to leave and then paused. “Thank you,” he added, and then left before she could tell him not to worry about it.

* * *

“What now?” Cara asked, when Din rejoined her in the cockpit. He put the Child down in the copilot seat.

“When Peli has recovered we’ll take her and her droids wherever she wants to go. Then we — I — will have to start looking for Gideon, I suppose.” Cara folded her arms. He looked away from her. “As for you — I —” he trailed off.

Cara felt her heart in her throat. “I can stay with you,” she whispered. He looked at her, and she pressed her lips together, looking at the Child. “I mean, if you want.”

“Cara —” he said, and he sounded like he was drowning. And she knew, she understood: he had nothing to offer her, not even his face. But she had nothing to offer him either. All they had, all they had ever had for each other, was their love. She didn’t want to be apart the next time something like this happened.

“You were right,” she said, feeling like she was about to start crying — and knowing she couldn’t say any more than that but that it didn’t matter because he understood: he was right, all that mattered was protecting the ones they loved. She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “And I — I love you.”

He said nothing, but she felt his hands on her waist — and his mouth on hers, and she knew what he meant: I love you too.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [twitter](http://twitter.com/theoceanblooms) or [tumblr](http://spectroscopes.tumblr.com)! If you really liked this fic, it would be lovely if you could [reblog](https://www.tumblr.com/reblog/614067711589367808/1vSWVPLZ) on tumblr.


End file.
